


everything you did to ball (fuck it, i’m just glad you called)

by strawb3rryshake



Series: (wednesday night interlude) [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: (between friends), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Light Angst, M/M, what's a lil pocket call confession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:00:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26387590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawb3rryshake/pseuds/strawb3rryshake
Summary: ““Fuck off,” he mumbles; and then, quieter, “wish you were here.”Bet you wish you were here, was what he meant to say. Probably.”—(since when has a pocket call not gone sideways?)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: (wednesday night interlude) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1908286
Comments: 12
Kudos: 88





	everything you did to ball (fuck it, i’m just glad you called)

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: if you’ve seen this before, no you haven’t <3, round two (part one is good for context but not a strict prerequisite)

He’s in a hotel. He’s always in a hotel. There’s something funny about his apartment that’d moved in after Yennefer left. Renfri had offered to fix it, as Renfri was in the habit of doing, but thirty-two-year-old Renfri with two kids and a skincare routine might actually be able to do it. She’s different now, into wheatgrass shots, and capoeira, and hanging out with Triss at weird bookstores. She says she’ll come over with incense and kolacky. It’s a nice thought but Baby Ren is only two and doesn’t like to fly. 

He’s watching porn, listless: double penetration with two headless men and a woman with jet black hair. The volume’s down too low but he’s too lazy to turn it up, lazier still when it comes to opening his pants and getting his dick out. He’s thinking about going back to Novigrad. He’s thinking about the bottle of Hennessey a Nazairi girl bought him after a gig in Beauclair, her lips and her nails the color of apples.

A bottle of it is sitting on the desk now, next to the coffee and the individually wrapped plastic cups. Opening it, drinking any, is not something he intended but the way the bottle feels in his hand makes him feel like it needs to be poured. He’s also out of cigarettes.

The first glass is fucking awful but he’s bored and uncomfortable and quickly deciding he wants to be drunk so he goes for another one. He’s almost the bottle deep, laid out on the bed, when he pulls out his phone and hits the first number in his call history. He’s not sure whom he’d called last but he hopes it’s not Eskel. Or ( _fuck_ ) Lambert. 

Lucky him—it’s neither. “Geralt!” the voice is loud and crackly through the speakers, “miss me already?”

“Jaskier?” and he feels like he’s breathing too heavily into the phone, “Jas, is that you?”

Jaskier’s laughing at him. Of course. He wants to hang up but can’t quite bring himself to do it. Knowing Jaskier, he’d just get a call back

“Yeah, it’s me,” and then, giggling, “are you drunk?”

Geralt has half a mind to lie but changes it mid-syllable. “Mm. Yeah. I guess.”

The ripple of Jaskier’s laughter is dulled in the speaker of his phone but still loud enough to make him wince and throw an arm over his face. He doesn’t know what’s so funny; it feels like he’s been drunk most of the year.

“Fuck off,” he mumbles; and then, quieter, “wish you were here.”

 _Bet you wish you were here_ , was what he meant to say. Probably.

Jaskier’s still laughing. “Trying to tempt me, darling? Need me to help you finish the bottle? _Oh_ , we could do body shots!”

“Fuck _off_ ,” Geralt groans into the phone, but it’s got no weight to it and Jaskier’s laughter is cacophonous. “Fucking Lambert. M’gonna kill him. Never should’ve told you about that.”

He sounds childish, doesn’t know how he can sound so childish when he feels so _old_ , the oldest he’s ever been, thirty-eight and sloppy drunk on a polyester duvet, and he knows he’s not hiding it well enough when Jaskier’s laughter fades from a crackle to a whisper. The space in the sound is gaping and Geralt feels like he’s floated out of his own body when he fills it. 

“M’lonely.”

He remembers crying often as a child. He had cried when Ciri was born. Never since. Here, lying on the bed, he kind of wants to. Just to see if it alleviates some of the pressure behind his ribs. “I’m really fucking lonely.”

Jaskier’s gone quiet on the phone. “Do. Um. D’you want me to fly out? I can fly out I don’t have anything going on tomorrow—”

“No,” Geralt tries to sit up and regrets it, his head spinning, his belt buckle biting into the skin of his stomach, “No, I’m—I’m…it’s fine. Just don’t hang up.”

Twice he tried to say “I’m fine”, failed both times. Maybe it’s a sign. Jaskier won’t believe him either way but he’ll ignore the lie and give Geralt what he wants. As always. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, I can do that. It’s only ten…it’s only ten-something here, I don’t have any plans.

“So, um,” his voice is low now, and gentle “do you want to…talk? About anything?”

He sounds worried and Geralt is wishing he’d called Coën, or Vesemir. Both of them practical to a fault; would’ve told him to take a shower and go to bed. Offered up a quick “ _take care_ _of yourself_ ” before hanging up on him. “Um…not really. I’m pretty drunk so…can’t really think of, anything. To talk about.”

He’s too honest when he gets like this, when he’s with Jaskier, but Jaskier is as long-suffering as he is short-sighted and doesn’t seem to mind. “Ah, okay. That’s fine.”

So begins a soft silence. Geralt settles into himself, relaxing in the quiet, rutting his back against the firmness of the mattress. It’s comforting, listening to the sounds on Jaskier’s end. Through the buzz of the phone he can hear [music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQYOL9qU6TY)—it’s corny shit, like what Ciri and Dara listen to when they’re mopey. The beat, what he can hear of it, is good though; sounds like breathing.

There’s a scraping sound, like a chair being pushed back, as Jaskier returns and the music stops.

“Geralt? You still there?”

Geralt nods.

“Geralt? Hellooo, Geralt?”

Oh, fuck. “Yeah, yeah I’m here.”

The faintest of laughs ghosts through the speaker. “Okay, cool. Is the music bothering you? I don’t know how much you can hear…”

Geralt doesn’t feel strongly either way and catches himself shrugging. “It’s fine.”

A couple taps and Jaskier’s turned it back on, a little louder and farther away so it’s gone sort of scratchy. “It’s…hah. It’s Marx’s new shit,” he admits, after what Geralt guesses is a swallow, “ _Gods_ , I can’t believe I’m telling you this. If anyone asks I never said any of it but—ah fuck. I can’t _lie_. It’s…good _._ Been stuck in my head, actually. Fucking cunt. I hope his cock falls off in his sleep.”

Geralt can see the words as they come out of his phone. Little flashes of light, bursts of black letters. Can understand them individually but is lost amongst the sentence structures. “Hm. Yeah.”

Not his best contribution but it’s fine; Jaskier prefers to ramble. It comes naturally to him and Geralt lets it happen. Hours pass. Or maybe thirty minutes. There’s a rhythm to Jaskier’s voice that’s loosening that thing in his chest. His tone has softened, his turn of phrase has gone sentimental.

“Jaskier,” Geralt pleads, he can see where this is headed. Jaskier almost gets the hint.

“Geralt, I just wanted to say—“

Coherency, at this moment, is beyond him. His mouth is too thickened with sleep and liquor. He tries anyway. “I know. You don’t have to say it, Julek, I know.”

“Okay,” then again, “okay.”

He says it anyway, when Geralt is so close to sleep he has forgotten every language he knows and can do nothing but feel: mild annoyance, heavy eyelids, the glow of light pressing into the curtains. The sound of the words populates his dreamscape and he wonders, when he wakes up loose-limbed and sated, if he’d said it back. Hopes he didn’t. ( _Hopes he did_ ). 

Jaskier won’t say.

**Author's Note:**

> shot, chaser (but the chaser is another shot). catharsis is coming in pt 3, i promise. thanks, as always, for reading x


End file.
